


A FINE RING

by spicyshimmy



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-08
Updated: 2012-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-29 05:51:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/316492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Dragon Age: Asunder</i> fic, written for Naiadestricolor on tumblr, with spoilers for the book and liberal use of speculation about Lord Seeker Lambert's past. <i>The tragedy of all men is that they were once younger men, the writing on the vellum read, in recognizable—and unfussy—ink.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	A FINE RING

_The tragedy of all men is that they were once younger men,_ the writing on the vellum read, in recognizable—and unfussy—ink.

‘That has a fine ring to it,’ Lambert said. The summer bugs were upon them in full force, seeking out the narrows and the weaknesses of templar armor better than most enemies wielding staff or sword.

They all stood on formality—until the sun crested its zenith, at which point slim hands divested of their gloves helped him with the first of the buckles, the clinch at the spine in the very back. It was near-impossible to reach without some kind of acrobatics, the soreness of his shoulders also limited by the press and weight of sturdy metal.

Beneath the metal was padding and sweat. Lambert fanned the former to ease the latter, gloves set atop gauntlets in the half-circle of an opened gorget.

‘You’re too kind,’ Lambert said, hair dark and damp at the nape of his neck, beneath the simpler cloth collar.

‘I could say the same for you,’ Val replied.

A nickname, and a good one, though he laughed whenever they recalled the comparisons, the reasons. _Valhail_ : the first known Black Divine, 3:87 Towers.

 _Call me Val,_ he’d said, with those eyes of his flashing. He was a difficult man to refuse, and not _only_ because of the sparkling fingertips.

It wasn’t the magic—not unless personality itself was a spell, wrought half by charm and half by inspiration. He walked slowly enough in the streets, but it always gave the impression of charging, and by the end of each stroll Lambert’s throat was flushed, pulse points beaded with fresh sweat, hair curling at his temple.

Maker thank his uncomplicated complexion. He never outright blushed, not on his cheeks, and that—in its way—was a blessing.

Lambert leaned back in the grass, stoppered inkwell between them and tall quill pen forgotten, paper and words and bugs. Val settled in his way, with the limitations of skirts instead of the limitations of silverite, of new leather. Breaking the replacement in was a longer process than breaking the first—perhaps because they broke together.

‘You shouldn’t have ruined the old suit,’ Val said, chin on his knuckles.

‘You shouldn’t throw such convincing fireballs,’ Lambert replied.

Val shrugged with his hands, little ring on his littlest finger. When he saw Lambert watching it he slipped it loose, resting with its red jewel like a pomegranate’s seed in the center of his palm.

‘Keep it,’ he said. ‘It’s only a family heirloom. The last memento of a minor magister.’

‘You’re too kind,’ Lambert repeated. The trinket was small in his hand, the same jolt of magic that spun itself between a templar’s touch and a mage’s answering gesture, one to cancel the other.

 _Or enhance it,_ Val said one night, spreading his fingers wide against the sky, between the stars. He wasn’t drunk. Neither was Lambert, though the wine was rich and heady and refused to settle.

The glowlamps offered tickling light that also refused to settle. The Imperium by night held no more shadows than the Imperium by day; it was only the impression of the shadows, and which bugs came out, and what color pauldrons were pinned at Val’s shoulder.

Val leaned forward, lifting a mosquito away from Lambert’s cheek, both of them still in the same shaft of sunlight. It stood upon his thumb, considering blood, before Val blew it away.

*

Lambert kept the ring in a box of effects with little else to place upon the velvet. The wood was simple. He had to install a fresh lock in order to keep it safe; there was a pouch he tucked under his breastplate where the key resided, heavier than the ring it protected, but the same could be said for the templars who protected the mages. They were heavier, too.

Literally heavier.

‘I’ll speak to a jeweler about it,’ Val promised, and so he did, just before Lambert’s nineteenth. The golden band was stretched wide enough to encircle his thumb, thin enough that it wouldn’t disturb his grip.

It flashed when he fought, those simple practice skirmishes in the courtyard suffered while wearing weighted armor plates, until his limbs were too heavy even to drag and his muscles stiffer than new leather, more leaden than his broadsword. He didn’t scrape his heels against the stone and a few of the local mages watched, appreciative, none of them with Val’s eyes.

Then he ate, as he understood it, with foreign relish, too much gusto. He didn’t pick at the things he had a taste for or play coy with them, a handful of pomegranate seeds that burst inside his mouth and figs to follow, clean water after that.

When he touched himself the slide of the ring could be felt, a sudden shock of something cool that couldn’t last, not once flesh warmed it. Then he saw it beneath the water as he sank into his tub to bathe, after he’d held himself not unsteady, head bent for reasons other than the rhythm of the Chant.

*

Val accepted nothing in return. He needed no help with the items he removed for comfort because together it was possible to shed those trappings and see what the other was _underneath_ , though he allowed—one late afternoon, brushing the grass off his knees—Lambert to help him on with a glove.

It was a simple accessory above bare fingers, palms up and out. Lambert felt his pulse, blue through his skin, at the wrist where he tugged the fabric up to the hem of his sleeve. There was a clutch of feathers there; they rustled in the breeze.

‘It suits you,’ Val said. ‘…I don’t mean the ring, either.’

He meant the trees, the sunlight, the curl of hair at Lambert’s temple—maybe the flush on his throat, bare because the gorget wasn’t there to hide it, or the way he thought of Val whenever he swallowed.

 **END**


End file.
